There are several medical, biological, chemical and pharmaceutical devices which are concerned with the handling and use of liquids. For example, there are automated liquid handling systems for carrying out medical, biological, physical and chemical investigations or to carry out processes in these areas.
Today, most of the automated liquid handling systems are so called computer-controlled handling systems.
A typical computer-controlled handling system comprises a working area (working table) for placing containers for liquids, a motorized pipetting robot and a controller (mostly a processor-based controller). The pipetting robot comprises at least one pipette for aspirating and dispensing liquid probes. By the use of a sequence program, which is carried out in the controller, the pipetting robot may be moved to a defined position for carrying out a specific action there. For example, in this way a pipette may be lowered into a container for aspirating a liquid or for dispensing a liquid there.
Modern handling systems comprise more than only one robot. It may be very complex in such systems to define the single courses of movements in such a way that no collision or mutual impairments occurs.
A simple approach would be the application of a learning process (so called teach-in) where the single robotic arms are moved manually, thereby defining the desired actions. However, such a teach-in process soon reaches its limits e.g. when an entire process shall be optimized.
For avoiding collisions in robotic systems, mathematical methods may be used for assessing collisions. Numerous publications exist here.
In the end, it may be concluded from the theoretical observations that it is very difficult and complex to compare the different collision procedures with each other. This is mainly based on the fact that the different collision procedures are very sensitive with respect to specific scenarios and constellations.
Thus, there is the problem to configure the controller of a multi-axial handling system as flexible and productive as possible, wherein a collision avoidance for single, moving arms of such a handling system shall be carried out as fast as possible.